Malfunctions of the Heart
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Voyager Relaunch, spoilers for "Protectors". Haley has words with Lewis Zimmerman about what he did to the Doctor's program.


Malfunctions of the Heart

By Laura Schiller

Based on the _Star Trek: Voyager_ novels

Copyright: Kirsten Beyer

"Oh no, Lewis," said Haley when he showed her the code he had written. "What have you done?"

Dr. Lewis Zimmerman closed the file with a sharp jab at the holodeck console. "For Cochrane's sake, Haley, don't be so dramatic."

"You know it's not right." Her soft dark eyes were reproachful as she turned away from the screen to look up at him. "Don't you remember what happened the _last_ time someone tampered with his memories? What do you think he'll do when he finds out?"

"I'll have you know that Mark One's memories are still fully intact," Lewis grumbled, turning his back on her to march out of the stainless-steel holodeck and over to his desk. He began to gather up the padds scattered across it, with hands that were less steady than he would have liked. "I just … toned down a few of them. Made them less intense. It happens to us organics every day."

"But why would he want any of his memories toned down?"

"Because he was suffering_,_ that's why!"

Lewis swung around, his lab coat billowing, to glare at his assistant. Haley took a step back. It was not his raised voice that startled her; heaven knew she was used to it. It was the shocking depth of pain in the brown eyes so like his creation's – and hers.

He hadn't looked this way since the worst stage of his illness.

"And there wasn't a damn thing I could do to help him," said Lewis. "Except this. I'm an engineer, not a counselor. And yes," holding up his hand, "I _know_ it's a counselor he should have gone to. But don't you think I told him that? Don't you think I tried every possible argument to talk him out of this ridiculous idea?"

"You mean he didn't - "

"He's a Mark One," said Lewis, with bitter irony. "Of course he didn't listen You're the only sentient being, organic or not, who listens to me these days. I'd appreciate it if you didn't stop now."

Haley heard a sound coming out of her own vocal processor that could almost have been a sob.

"What was I supposed to do?" Lewis raged, throwing up both hands. "Nothing? Let him reprogram himself as he threatened to do, and possibly damage himself even more? If that blasted Borg drone ever walks into my lab, I swear to God, I won't be held responsible for my actions. If she had to break his heart the way she did, couldn't she at least have the decency to transfer instead of carrying on a new affair under his nose? And with Hugh Cambridge, of all people! I've met the man, he's insufferable! I didn't ask that ridiculous Mark One to come barging into my station, I didn't ask him to save my life! How did I … how did this … oh, Haley, first you and now him! How did all my work in holoengineering become so … so _personal_?"

Among the high stuffed shelves, gray walls and hard metal desk where he had tried to compose his last will four years ago, he looked suddenly very small and very old.

"Because you love your work," said Haley, carefully reaching out to place a hand on his arm. "Because your heart is in it. That's why your creations come to life."

"Hmm." A wry smile tugged at the left corner of his mouth. "I never took you for a poet, my girl."

"It was actually Reg - _Lieutenant_ Barclay who said that," she confessed, tilting her head a little so that her ash-blond hair swung forward. The memory took her off-guard, Reg's earnest face over the comm, hollow-eyed with sleepless nights trying to track Meegan. "_Lewis worked a m-miracle with her,_" he'd stammered breathlessly, "_And I thought it was a privilege to help him. S-s-some help I turned to be! And Commander Glenn – oh God, Haley, if you could have seen the d-disappointment on her face … "_

Clarissa Glenn. His brilliant, beautiful captain. The woman he had not stopped writing or talking about from the moment he became assigned to her ship. Haley had no idea what being shot with a phaser felt like, but she imagined these sharp twists in her emotional subroutines to be a great deal like it.

Lieutenant Barclay. Reg. Tweaking Leonard the iguana's program so it could sing Klingon opera, risking Lewis' temper, just to make her laugh. Blazing with conviction about joining the Pathfinder project, because his heart had gone out to the stranded _Voyager_ crew and no amount of reasoning could talk him out of trying to find them. Bringing the Doctor to save Lewis' life. Smiling at her, thanking her, even for the simplest things such as fresh sheets or a replicated meal. Talking to her as if she were human.

"_How come you're the only pretty woman I can talk to without making an idiot of myself?_" he would ask her ruefully.

The Doctor's voice joined Reg's, and her own, in a chorus of perfect photonic memory._"A friend, a mentor, nothing more … how could I not give her what she needs, never mind what I want for myself? If you met her, you'd understand. There is no one in the universe like Seven of Nine."_

There was no one in the universe like Reg, either

"I'm sorry, Lewis," she said. "I shouldn't judge … I think I understand why you did it. The Doctor, too."

"Do you?" He watched her narrowly, making her pray he couldn't read too much into her expression. It was a futile hope; after all, he had designed her face.

"Care to talk about it?" he asked, making his powerful voice as soft as the flannel of her dress.

"Not right now, thank you. You have enough to worry about. Whatever I have will keep."

"Somehow that's not entirely reassuring."

She shrugged.

"Haley, Haley." He put both hands on her shoulders and gave them an awkward little rub, up and down, as if she were cold and needed to be warmed with a towel. "What am I going to do with the two of you, hmm? What's the use of giving my creations life if I can't give them a happy one?"

"I don't know," said Haley. "But I think … "

"Yes?"

"I think it's only the best kind of creator who would even ask ."

His eyes began to shine with tears, and rather than see them, she wrapped her arms around him and hid her face in the crook of his neck. She left no tearstains on the faded white fabric of his lab coat, as he did on her dress. The mark she left would be invisible.

"You know he's going to find out someday what you did," she said. He opened his mouth to interrupt, but she went on. "And he's going to feel betrayed, even after he finds out that the procedure was his own idea. Things will be said that both of you regret. But I promise you, Lewis, when that happens, I will be there for you. _Both _of you. I will do everything in my power to hold this family together."

She looked down at her own frail hands, imagining the weight of heartbreak, anger and so much love in her palms, like a snowglobe that might shatter. Was she strong enough to carry it?

"_I don't know you do it," _Reg had once told her, during the dark days of Lewis' illness. "_You're one of the strongest people I've ever known."_

"I didn't program you to be like this," said Lewis, shaking his head in wonder. "God only knows how that happened – if there is a God. Still, I'm very glad it did."

She smiled at him, he shrugged, and their odd little corner of the world felt just a little bit less lonely. There were many kinds of love, after all, and this was not the least of them.

"I'm glad you happened too," said Haley. "Remember that."


End file.
